In Memoriam

January 15, 2012 @ 11:08 am posted by Michael Sexton

Harry Kernahan

1937 – 2012

Before there was Stephen there was Harry. Known as “the Horse” Harry Kernahan was a no-nonsense ruckman from South Australia’s iron triangle. He played 176 games for Glenelg and 13 for South Australia including the side that beat Victoria on the MCG in 1963. In 1962 when the Croweaters beat Western Australia in Perth Harry nursed a broken collarbone through the last quarter because the coach Fos Williams told him he couldn’t come off. Harry played every game wearing thick horn rimmed glasses and through them he saw the game and the world in a straight forward manner that made him a successful administrator for decades after retiring. One of his proudest moments was watching two of his sons play in the 1985 premiership for the Tigers – a side he had recruited and helped nurture. In August 2005 he was a guest of honour at the 20th reunion of the team:

The annual Glenelg Hall of Fame dinner was reaching the point where men were starting to kick their chairs back from the table and loosen their ties. They had re-lived the glory of 1985, inducted a few champions, applauded a dying legend and were getting into the serious reminiscing.

I sat opposite the artist Tom Gleghorn and his wife. Tom was in his 80s and said little through the evening. While all around him were black ties, he wore a colourful cravat and a burgundy jumper that looked home knitted. His wife sat bird like, her hair set and coloured. Scott Salisbury, the square jawed hard man of yore came around the table carrying a beer glass and pecked Mrs Gleghorn on the cheek. He then gathered my attention by leaning forward and kissing Tom on the lips.

Salisbury is one of only two players Gleghorn has ever painted. The portrait is a head and shoulders study of a warrior, hair damp with perspiration and eye bloodied from combat. The other portrait is of Thai-born Sudjai Cook kicking for goal. The background is a kaleidoscope of colours. “I like Sudjai,” said Tom when I asked him about the painting, “he is not from here but he is one of us. There is a certain poetry in him when he plays.”

Tom had been introduced to the Bay in the 1970s when he was teaching art at the old Underdale College. There he met Graham Cornes who was studying Phys Ed and the footballer invited him to practice to study the human form for drawing lessons. He maintained an interest in the club.

Earlier Harry Kernahan sat at our table shuffling papers and draining schooners of West End draft. A parade of people came for an audience, fans wanting autographs (which he seemed happier to give than they receive) former employees who worked with him and players he had recruited or played with. Harry was General Manager here for the best 20 years the club had ever had during which it won three flags. The Horse was back to present the 1985 players to the faithful and in his 70s was getting twitchy about it.

“I had to shoe horn him into it,” said past players’ convenor Ron “Rocker” Redford. I asked Horse what Rocker was like as a player and he studied the craggy, bearded face staring at him and said “you’d go to war with him.”

Rocker was fussing about Harry making sure he understood what he had to do and what would happen at various times. Horse went outside for a gasper then returned and sunk a beer and met a few people and studied the papers again, blew out a deep nervous breath and disappeared for another fag.

“Where’s Horse?” demanded Rocker returning from another errand.

“Dunno”

“Geez – he better not have done a runner”

Horse returned and scratched some more notes and when the time came stood regally and walked toward the podium. Rocker snatched his arm mid-stride and hissed

“Now don’t fuck it up.”

What followed was one of the most moving presentations I have seen. Within the parameters of a gruff old man who came from a time where men swallowed pain and showed nothing, came a flow of humour and love for a group of footballers now growing grey and heavy in their 40s. One by one he introduced them and as each walked up to the stage Harry told a story in a fatherly way about them. Each anecdote showed a bit about them and a bit about Horse and a lot about why clubs thrive when they have a strong man running it.

I got a call one morning from a bloke in Renmark.

Mr Kernahan

Yes

Glenelg Football Club owes me $600

Why?

Houseboat damage by your players

Huh?

I spoke to Stephen that night and asked him what happened on the trip.

We got a houseboat stuck on a sandbar.

Why is that worth 600 bucks?

We tried to get it off by ramming it with the other one.

We paid it.

I was driving to a funeral at Claire with Wayne Stringer and we were trying to name every member of the 85-premiership team. We got 19 and couldn’t find the last one. It was driving us nuts. All of a sudden Wayne yells out – Horse you old dill it’s Doozer.

How’s that? Forgot my own son. Come on up David.

We recruited John Seebohm from the southeast and people said it wasn’t a great choice. OK I accept he only played 350 games of league football and two premierships. I accept he could only play two positions centre half forward and centre half back. I accept he didn’t say much to the coach or yell in the rooms beforehand and get stirred up and I accept he never bagged a team mate or took a cheap shot at an opponent. But he did go in and get the ball didn’t he?

In 1966 I went to play in Whyalla and I started coaching North Whyalla. First game there was this kid who was killing us in the ruck. I said at quarter time I played state footy I’ll go on the ball and take care of him. He jumps all over me and at the end of the game I rang Ray Curnow and said get up here and sign him. So he drives up in his old Morris Minor and we go around to Barrie Robran’s place and he says sorry I already told North Adelaide I’ll play there. Second week same thing. This young kid is killing us and I go onto the ball. He is jumping all over me putting his boot in my neck and at the end of the game I ring Ray.

There’s another one

Oh no not again Harry

Anyway up he drives in the Morris and we go around to the BHP working men’s singles quarters. As we go in there is this kid lying on the bed with long hair, a big cowboy hat on strumming his guitar. Ray stopped and looked and turned slowly to me and growled: You have got to be bloody joking.

But he signed him and Graham Cornes has been a great player and coach of this club.

I was sitting at my desk in a quiet moment one day and the phone rings. Receptionist says there’s a bloke from St Kilda here to see you.

I said oh is there. I wander down and there is this little man (Harry leans down and holds his hand at knee height). I ask why have you come here? He said to get Peter Carey to the Saints. I said really. (He pauses and looks up from addressing his knees and then looks down again) I said why don’t you get the hell out of here before your cab has turned around because there is no way you are leaving with Peter Carey. I never saw him again. Ladies and gentlemen there are many good players in football and there are some greats and then there is a rare number who are champions. Tonight you get to see one of those champions – Peter Carey.

Most players hugged Harry on the way past on their way to the podium. Tony Hall said he was so excited to see Harry again. He had coached him in Under 10s when he was Mr Kernahan. In 1987 the Horse told him not to sign with Sydney for a promised bag of gold because they were a mess. Harry sorted out a deal for less money with Hawthorn and two premierships later Hall said Harry was always right about football.

As the last player was introduced they all stood in a semi-circle behind the old horse. He looked at them quietly with a smirk and leant into the microphone.

“What do I do now Rocker?”

“Just sit down mate”, he roared back.

Harry made his way back. Tom Gleghorn raised a glass to him and they laughed.

by: Graham Cornes, from: The Advertiser, January 14, 2012 12:01AM

HOW sad it is when someone who has had such a profound impact on your life suddenly departs. Harry Kernahan was such a man.

He came to Whyalla in 1966 to manage one of the city's banks and when he suited up as playing-coach of South Whyalla, we were more than a little intimidated by his reputation.

He was a legend, not because he was a silky-smooth thoroughbred of the game - indeed, raw-boned and lion-hearted is a better description - but he had been a member of the famous state side of 1963 that had vanquished the "Big V" on the MCG.

His legend was further enhanced in a state game against Western Australia. South Australia had been reduced to 18 fit men before Kernahan broke his collarbone in the last quarter but courageously stayed on the ground.

He was a great player in Whyalla, winning the competition's highest award, The Whyalla News Medal, and coaching South to the 1968 premiership.

He splattered us all over the Bennett and Memorial Ovals and seemed to do as he liked as a dominant ruckman. You don't think great players like that notice you but he introduced me to the Glenelg Football Club, of which he had been captain before being transferred to Whyalla, and convinced me to make the move to the city.

Life would have been so much different without Harry.

When he moved back to Adelaide in 1969, we played together for the Bays. It was a great thrill and I was still playing 12 years later when his son Stephen made his Glenelg debut. It's not often you get to play with the father and the son of a famous football family - both of whom are legends in their own ways.

In many ways, he was a father figure to young players, even more so when he finished playing and was appointed club general manager. He was of proud Irish stock, the type which engenders a fierce determination and a temper that rises quickly to provocation.

He was resolute to the point of stubbornness, which enhanced his strength of character, but hardly made contract negotiations any easier. Most of all, he was a man's man, a clear leader around whom the club rallied for more than two decades.

We saw that temper in a preliminary final at Adelaide Oval in 1970. Harry had been in a bad mood anyway, as his wife Annette, a wonderful woman in every sense of the word, had packed the wrong shorts. He ran around in shorts that looked more like "Bombay Bloomers".

When coach Neil Kerley savaged him at three-quarter time over his performance, he had to be restrained by two team-mates from punching the coach. Still, he dominated the last quarter and Glenelg won a tight game.

Kerls never apologised, rationalising he got the best out of the veteran.

I don't think Harry ever really forgave him.

We called him "Horse". That's what he was - a workhorse and warhorse.

Harry Kernahan seemed invincible to me but he loved a smoke and a beer and in recent years he hadn't been well.

His once strong, angular frame was reduced to a shell of its former self by sickness even his stubbornness couldn't overcome. Few will leave as big a legacy.

Almanac Obituaries: Colin Churchett

May 24, 2020 by Michael Sexton

Sport creates legends and mythologies and one of South Australia’s went gently with the recent passing of Colin Churchett. He was 86 and had been ill for many years.

In his day “Churchy” was an undersized full forward for Glenelg in the post war years who twice kicked more than one hundred goals in a season.

While spearheads of the time (especially the indefatigable Ken Farmer) relied on leading, marking and a steady kick – Churchett was a quick and clever. His ability to seize an opportunity prompted Port Adelaide captain-coach Fos Williams to write “the opposition never knew when they had Colin Churchett under control … he could look so completely cornered with no chance of reaching the goals or even getting a kick in that direction. Yet suddenly the ball would fly over his shoulder for a major.”

That Colin Churchett could kick a goal from almost anywhere was not an accident. He had for years honed a skill – this is where the mythology begins – that may have made him the first player to regularly use what became known as the “check-side” punt.

It began with a kid kicking the ball for hours in the backyard pretending to be Glenelg’s Jack Owens. Then at Black Forest Primary School the sports master posed a question to the kid that if it is possible to kick the screw punt one way it must be possible to make it screw back the other way. He suggested holding the ball as if the clock hands were at two and eight. When dropped onto the right boot at that angle, the ball would curl around to the right thus opening up a range of goal scoring opportunities previously unavailable with regular punt kicks. The kid took the idea and honed it in his backyard for hours and hours.

Colin Churchett’s league career spluttered due to the war. He enlisted in the navy seeing active service and walking through the ashes of Hiroshima. When he returned to Adelaide he asked for a game at Glenelg and was played on a forward flank. One day in 1947 he was sent to full forward to cover an injured player and it was time to unpack the backyard tricks.

If Saturday afternoons were the matinee then his team-mates received an advance showing during the week. To start training sessions, Churchett would start on the boundary line and kick for goal. After each successful shot he would move further around the line until he has slotted one from the full arc. Training would stop when he reached a tight angle and unleash his reverse screw punts. As they tailed through the goal posts his team mates would applaud and laugh at the skill and audacity.

In the opening round of the 1949 season against South Adelaide Churchett kicked 13.7 after which he was described in The Football Budget as “essentially a ground player and relies upon his uncanny shooting for goal with either foot.”

While Churchett’s skills remained a solo performance at the Bay, a contemporary was taking it to a team level. Norwood captain-coach Jack Oatey had a strong belief that skill rather than conditioning or strength ultimately wins games. First at Norwood then West Adelaide but most famously at Sturt, he spent training sessions turning his players into football artisans.

Oatey taught all his players the same kick Churchett had. In the late 1960s the Double Blues won five premierships in a row with a blend of speed and skill. In the 1968 grand final Peter Endersbee set the win up in the first quarter with two goals from kicks the television commentators called “backscrew punts”.

Somewhere along the line the kick became known as a “check side” and was eventually listed by the National Trust as a South Australian icon alongside Stobie poles and frog cakes. Victorian commentators simplified the name to a “banana kick” and it now flourishes with AFL players regularly spinning balls like Shane Warne leg breaks for goals.

Colin Churchett followed the development of the game and the kick throughout his life. Several years ago we met in his modest home and after a cup of tea he produced this photograph of a match against Norwood. Churchett is on the run and dropping the ball “check-side” onto his boot.

“I kicked a lot of goals from it in my time,” he said softly tapping the photo with his finger. “Now everyone is doing it.”

Colin Churchett, Glenelg 1943, 46 – 54 186 games, 556 goals